0. What is Darcs-git Darcs-git is a branch of Darcs that can work with Git repositories.
Darcs-git is deliberately Darcs, not Git. All commands either work in the same way on Git repositories as on Darcs repositories, or they fail. If you're a Darcs user, you'll like darcs-git. If you're a Git user, you'll probably find it infuriating. On the other hand, Darcs-git uses stock Git repositories; a Darcs command either works as-is on a Git repository, or fails. 1. What you can expect The following should work reasonably well on Git repositories: darcs changes darcs whatsnew darcs pull darcs send darcs record The following commands work, but have serious performance problems: darcs diff darcs changes with a file argument The following commands should in principle work but haven't been tested: darcs add darcs remove darcs dist darcs trackdown The following commands don't work because I'm lazy:: darcs push darcs unrecord darcs unpull darcs amend-record darcs annotate darcs rollback The following commands only work on native Darcs repositories, either because they don't make sense on Git repositories, or because there are perfectly good native Git tools to perform their function: darcs initialize darcs get/put darcs check darcs repair darcs optimize darcs mv darcs replace darcs resolve darcs tag darcs setpref Remote Git repositories are not supported. 2. A tutorial (0) Build darcs-git $ darcs get --partial http://www.pps.jussieu.fr/~jch/software/repos/darcs-git $ cd darcs-git $ make darcs $ make Context.hs $ make darcs $ cp darcs ~/bin/ (1) Get a copy of the Linux Git repository: $ cd /usr/local/src $ mkdir linux-2.6 $ cd linux-2.6 $ rsync -r rsync://rsync.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/torvalds/linux-2.6.git .git $ curl http://rsync.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/torvalds/linux-2.6.git/HEAD > .git/HEAD We still need to bring the cache and working directory into a state that Darcs will be happy with. While this could in principle be done with Darcs itself, it will be faster to do it with Git: $ read-tree `cat .git/HEAD` $ checkout-cache -a $ update-cache --refresh (2) Check what the friendly Linux hackers have been up to: $ darcs changes | more $ darcs changes -s | more (3) Create a local clone of the Linux repository: $ cd .. $ mkdir linux-2.6-local $ mkdir linux-2.6-local/.git $ ln -s `pwd`/linux-2.6/.git/objects linux-2.6-local/.git $ cp linux-2.6/.git/HEAD linux-2.6-local/.git $ cd linux-2.6-local $ read-tree `cat .git/HEAD` $ checkout-cache -a $ update-cache --refresh (4) Commit some work First, check that Darcs is happy with the new repository. $ darcs whatsnew This should take a few seconds at most; if it takes minutes instead, try running ``update-cache --refresh''. Okay, let's add myself to the list of Linux maintainers. $ echo 'P: Juliusz Chroboczek' >> MAINTAINERS Let's see if Darcs agrees. $ darcs whatsnew -s $ darcs whatsnew Everything looks fine, let's record (commit) this patch. $ darcs record -a $ darcs changes | more $ darcs changes -s | more (5) Send it upstream If Linus were using Darcs, we could just send him a Darcs patch, which is a patch-like data structure that contains just enough context information to allow Darcs to perform a history-sensitive merge: $ darcs send ../linux-2.6 However, until Linus switches to Darcs, we're stuck with old-fashioned patches. $ darcs diff -u --patch='.' | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unfortunately, until I've spent some time optimising ``darcs diff'', the above won't terminate on a repository the size of Linux'. 3. Caveats There is little input validation. In particular, if you enter an e-mail address that doesn't end in ``>'', Darcs will write a commit that neither Git nor Darcs itself will be able to parse. Darcs never updates the Git cache. If you perform many commits using Darcs, you'll need to manually run ``update-cache --refresh''. Darcs treats Git merges by reverse-engineering a Darcs merge (thanks to David Roundy for outlining how that can be done). In practice, this means that Darcs will collapse as soon as it sees a nontrivial Git merge. _______________________________________________ darcs-users mailing list darcs-users@darcs.net http://www.abridgegame.org/mailman/listinfo/darcs-users
